In January 2009, a twin engine jet aircraft that had recently taken off from a New York City area airport had a collision with a flock of geese. Numerous geese were sucked into the engines and caused both engines to fail, but the pilot was able to maneuver the aircraft into a safe landing on the Hudson River. Everybody survived this crash, and there were no serious injuries; government agencies concluded that this crash was caused by the intake of birds into the engines. In the few months since this incident, there have been an increasing number of news reports about birds striking aircraft, and that overall, the number of bird strikes has been increasing over the past few years. Some of this increase is due, in part to additional protections for wildlife, and the location of many airports near bodies of water where birds are resident.
However, the incidence of bird strikes and resultant airplane crashes are far from recent occurrences. For example, in the prior art U.S. Pat. No. 3,121,545 (Meletiou) refers to a plane crash near Boston in the early 1960's that was caused by the ingestion of a flock of starlings, and discloses a rotary deflector for aircraft engine intakes.
King (U.S. Pat. No. 3,400,902) discloses a moveable anti-ingestion screen mounted within an engine's intake.
McDonald (U.S. Pat. No. 4,149,689) discloses a protective screen for a jet-engine intake.
Wooding (U.S. Pat. No. 4,354,346) discloses an air intake that will allow a bird to enter, and to become smaller pieces that will fit in the engine. The Abstract states that to minimize damage to the engine, the surface region is formed such that the bird is retarded by it, and eviscerated so as to produce bird debris of a sufficiently low density to be safely ingested by the engine.
Ray et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,617,028) disclose an aircraft engine air intake including a foreign object separator in which relatively large foreign objects, such as medium size birds that enter the inlet aperture, will be unable to navigate the first bend in the intermediate portion of the intake and thus not be able to enter the engine.
Dearman et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,411,224) discloses a conically shaped guard apparatus for the intake of a jet engine.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,549,259 Herlik discloses use of a deflector fitted over the engine intakes and designed to deflect large birds away from the engine.
Barnett et al. (U.S. Pat. App. No. 2007/0059169 A1) focuses on making engine components that are resistant to impact damage.
Pavlatos (U.S. Pat. No. 7,494,522 B2) discloses a number of different embodiments of devices that can be used as either a guard, a cap, or a screen for use on the air intakes of jet engines.
But none of the prior art references utilize the combination of a screen and shock absorbing mechanism employed in embodiments of the present invention. As will be shown in other sections of this specification, these embodiments could be used on aircraft used for civilian and/or military purposes. In addition to their use on fixed wing aircraft, such as jet planes, embodiments of the present invention could be adapted for use on rotor craft (also referred to as rotary-wing aircraft), such as helicopters, and other airframes that are capable of vertical take-offs and landings.